“Well, we give in! On condition that you are under twenty-five, and that you will wear a rose (recognizably) in your bodice the first time you appear in Broadway with the hat and balzarine, we will pay the bills. Write us thereafter a sketch of Bel and yourself, as cleverly done as this letter, and you may ‘snuggle down’ on the sofa, and consider us paid, and the public charmed with you.”
Mr. Willis at once introduced her through his columns to the American public, and, though they never saw each other but once, he became from this time on her life-long literary adviser and friend. And so, after the long struggle with poverty and ill-health, this woman, by dint of an imperious will and an unmistakable genius, began to take her place among the foremost literary characters of America. We quote from her biographer, Dr. Kendrick, who is well qualified by his intellectual acumen and fine poetic nature to judge of the quality of her mind:
“Those who now turn over the stories of Alderbrook will, I think, be at no loss to explain the popularity which they attained. They will find in them a truth to nature—a freshness and raciness of thought and diction—a freedom from the hackneyed conventionalisms of ordinary story-telling, a descriptive and dramatic power, which lend to them an unfailing charm. The language is ever plain and simple. They never affect ‘big’ words, nor deck themselves out in fripperies of expression. If there are occasional conceits of thought—and such are almost inevitable in a young woman’s first converse with the public—the style is almost wholly free from them. It delights in that plain Anglo-Saxon that comes freighted with home associations to every heart; and yet this simple style, under her delicate handling, has all the grace of ornament.
“Another source of the popularity of her sketches is found in the spirit and vivacity of her descriptions—showing a clear and close eye for the observation of nature—and in the lifelike truthfulness of her character-drawing. Her personages are not mere pegs on which to hang a story—a train of external incidents: they are themselves the story. They are not mere labelled embodiments of the virtues and vices of the Decalogue, but actual men and women, brought by a few simple but effective touches livingly before the eye, and, even in her lightest sketches, sharply individualized. Thus the interest of her stories is emphatically a human interest. It is not what the actors do, but what they are, that rivets our attention, and chains us to her fascinating pages. As might be inferred from this, she possesses extraordinary dramatic power. The dramatis personæ live and breathe and move through the story. The author transports herself into the scene; identifies herself with her characters; and instead of conducting her narration by cold, second-hand details, makes it gush warmly and livingly from the lips of the speakers. Not unfrequently nearly the whole story is unfolded by dialogue, natural, racy, and spirited, and that which in its mere outward details would be but a trivial incident, under this warm, dramatic handling, and imbedded in human passion, is impregnated with life and interest. Equally happy, too, is Emily in the conduct of her narrative—in the management of the plot—in so seizing upon the hinging-points, the nodes and crises of the story, and so coloring, and grouping, and contrasting them, as to give them their utmost effect. With the instinctive eye of genius, she separates the incidental from the essential, and strikes to the inmost core of her subject.
“And finally—and here perhaps was pre-eminently the secret of Emily’s power—she was drawing from her own life, ‘coloring from her own heart.’ With every stroke of her pen she daguerreotyped herself upon the page before her. The trials of her youth—her own harsh experiences—quivered through her bright and glittering fancies, and compelled many a tear from hearts unknowing of the cause. She was unconsciously obeying the dictum of the great Master; she moved others because she had first been moved herself. The tear that trembled in their eye answered to that which had first glistened in her own. The emotion that swelled their bosoms was responsive to that which had throbbed in her own breast. True to herself, she was true to the universal elements of humanity.
“And yet she was far from being the mere recorder; she dealt not in the mere statistics of experience. Her power of fancy was equal to her power of feeling. The germ of her conception sprung from the actual, but it developed itself in the realm of the ideal. When fancy supplied the groundwork, her feelings insensibly blended themselves with it, giving it genuineness and vitality. When she started from experience, fancy instantly stood as its servitor, ready to invest the creation with her bright and glittering hues. Thus her heart and life-experiences were so transfigured and idealized that she did not obtrude herself indelicately or painfully before the public. ‘Grace Linden,’ ‘Lilias Fane,’ ‘Dora,’ ‘Nora Maylie,’ ‘Ida Ravelin,’ even, were all born in he depths of her own nature, all embodied a certain portion of her spiritual essence; yet all were so wrought and moulded, so blended with imaginative elements, that she for whom they really stood ‘passed in music out of sight.’ So amidst the deeper emotions of later life her power of imagination kept pace with her power of passionate emotion. ‘My Bird,’ ‘Watching,’ ‘My Angel Guide,’ are beautifully idealized, and it is only perhaps in ‘Sweet Mother’ that the bleeding, agonizing heart of the stricken wife and daughter comes nakedly before the public. And with all this, there breathes through all her pages a tenderness and delicacy of sentiment which impart to them a nameless charm.
“In this slight analysis I am not claiming for ‘Fanny Forester’s’ sketches the highest order of genius. They are a woman’s production, and are thoroughly womanly. They aspire to no heights of masculine eloquence, no depths of philosophical teaching. They deal with the heart, the fancy, and the imagination. Nor in mere vigor and grasp of intellect is she, perhaps, to be classed with Joanna Bailie, Mrs. Browning, and Miss Bronté; although looking at all which she did, I am satisfied that she approaches much nearer to them in intellectual vigor than they do to her in womanly delicacy and softness. It is one of her high excellences that she never compromises her womanhood; and yet to her who could write the ‘Madness of the Missionary Enterprise,’ and render such contributions as she did to the memoir of her husband, is to be assigned no mean rank among the intellects of the world. Mr. Willis, Dr. Griswold, and Mr. H. B. Wallace, than whom our country has produced no more competent literary critics, estimated her genius as of a very high order, and regarded her true sphere as that not of popularity, but of fame.”
But, besides her intellectual gifts, Miss Chubbuck had an intensely religious nature. She was the child of pious parents, and was subject to very early religious impressions. She writes:
“The first event of any importance which I remember is the conversion of my sister Lavinia, when I was about seven years of age. My little cot was in her room; and as she grew worse after her baptism, the young members of the church were in the habit of spending the night with her, partly in the character of watchers, partly because of a unity of interest and feeling. She and her visitors spent the greater part of the night in conversation and prayer, without any thought of disturbing so sound a sleeper as I seemed to be, I was a silent, sometimes tearful listener when they talked; and when they prayed I used to kneel down in my bed, and with hands clasped and heart uplifted, follow them through to the end. I can not recall my exercises with any degree of distinctness; but I remember longing to go to heaven, and be with Christ; some moments of ecstasy, and some of deep depression on account of my childish delinquencies. My sister used often to converse with me on religious subjects; and I remember on one occasion her going to the next room and saying to my mother, ‘That child’s talk is wonderful! I believe, if there is a Christian in the world, she is one.’ For a moment I felt a deep thrill of joy, and then I became alarmed lest I should have deceived them. The effect was to make me reserved and cautious.”
In subsequent life she dated her conversion as occurring when she was eight years old. She used to attend all the religious services in the neighborhood. She writes: